


Rewrite the Stars

by Hagne



Category: The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Magic and Science, Modern Girl in Middle Earth, Mystery, Strong Female Characters, True Love
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-09
Updated: 2020-02-09
Packaged: 2021-02-27 21:46:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,401
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22632901
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hagne/pseuds/Hagne
Summary: People said that Fate could not be changed, that you could not mess with it, but people said that Love will conquer all too, that love was what really mattered. It  was up to us to choose between the two, just as it was up to Moira to do the same, choosing between the path that Fate and others had chosen for her even before her birth and the chance to become who she really wanted to be, despite it all.
Relationships: Legolas Greenleaf & Original Female Character(s), Legolas Greenleaf/Original Character(s), Legolas Greenleaf/Original Female Character(s)
Kudos: 1





	Rewrite the Stars

Sharp as the pointed teeth of a little mouse, the edgy stone she was following blindly with her bruised, sweaty palms ended up cutting the tender skin of her wrist when the mud under her old, shaggy boots threw Moira out of balance, a hiss of pain to slip through her chipped lips before the fear to attract the attention of the soldiers on patrol led her to swallow it back along with the tears that stung in her eyes, her right hand back to search blindly the stone of the wall against which she returned to crawl, swaying like an old drunk.  
An unforeseen yielding of the ground caused, this time on her cheek, another small cut that burned her tongue with a sob of pain when, in her fall, she rubbed her face against the stone wall, but Moira freed instead a tremulous breath to vent the pain before resuming the journey once again, aware that a few more abrasions on her skin were bearable, but losing the only contact with a reality that had become more and more distorted, blurred as if she was looking at it through a foggy window, was _worse_.  
It was as if someone had thrown a handful of dust in her eyes to make her blind, and no matter how many time she had tried to scrub them to clean her sight with the torn sleeve of her old robes in the hope of seeing again, still, her eyes struggled to focus on things, so much so that now, Moira, could not even distinguish the profile of a tree from that of a man, something dangerous in those dark ages.   
But for that inability, she, certainly, could not blame either the Valar or herself.  
Because her sudden and almost total blindness was not due to some divine plan or her own carelessness, but to the poisonous and polluted stench that had begun to plague the valley, and, in spite of what her fellow countrymen kept on saying, Isengard had never been so fetid and dark.  
It had not been so long since she had enjoyed swinging on the gnarled arms of the trees with Sanna, or since the fresh and gentle scent of the flowers that lined her house had made her smile while her eyes drank the lush greenery of the valley in a deep, relieved breath, while now, now there was nothing to look at.   
Even the oldest trees, those ones with the swollen womb and thick bark her father Bror loved to talk about to rehash old memories had stopped throwing their reassuring shadows to the foot of the Orthanch.  
Now, the towering oaks on which she enjoyed to climb as a child had been cruelly grubbed up like weeds from the rough and careless hands of the soldiers.  
 _Those fools._   
The sudden creak behind her convinced Moira to crouch behind the remains of the old wall that bordered the garden of Freda, waiting nervously for the tall and imposing shadows of the two men that had just appeared in the chilling silence of the night to turn the corner, fading as they had come in the thick fog.  
Resuming her journey would have been wise, at that point, but Moira let herself collapse against the wall, squinting her eyelids to seek rest for her tired eyes, indulging herself in a long and deep icy breath, warming the old shaggy scarf with which she had decided to hide.  
 _Hiding_. She had begun to do it for a while, now.  
Not that the unusual glacial cold was not a good reason to wear heavier clothes, but when her father had begun to demand her to camouflage under large straw hats and shapeless tunics even when she worked in the fields, Moira had realized that something was wrong with him.   
And that suspicion had begun to take root in her mind when a strange, thick fog had descended from the sky, covering the once beautiful, scented land under a blanket of mist and whispers.  
Whispers that, in the middle of the night, when, behind the sealed and boarder-up windows where people believed to be safe and sound, hummed about the disappearance of the maidens in the valley, disappearances someone attributed to leakage of love, or to the simple desire to flee from the mantle of blind despair that was slowly beginning to swallow the city.  
But disappearances that had convinced her father to prohibit more and more things, with the passing of time.   
Bror had demanded her complete obedience to his will, to not dwell more than a few hours under the imposing shadows of the tower, to not follow Sanna in some test of courage that more than once had made her come home with scraped elbows and knees, and then, then her father had become more and more demanding. _Frightened_.  
And when, a few months ago, her best friend had disappeared, going out had become forbidden.  
Yet, she could not help herself, driving away the authoritarian and dark voice of Bror from her tired mind when she decided to resume the walk, crawling from wall to wall, hiding in the shades of the sloping roofs of the houses and seeking a hiding place after every creak or sinister whisper behind her trembling back, sounds to which her ears were reactive, used to.  
Moira hunched her head between her shoulders when she crossed a dark and narrow alley, speeding up the pace once seen the grotesque shadow of a soldier behind her, but even if her almost blindness made her gait hesitant and uncertain, memory helped her to find the hole in the wall in which she slipped with hurry.  
The soft grass caressed her bare ankles when she walked in the small space that ran along the river, and it was with a restless glance cast over her shoulder that Moira disentangled the flask attached to the belt, plunging it in the water, sitting on the ankles and counting through clenched teeth the minutes that separated her from the arrival of the second patrol.  
Moira had learned to take account of their movements, their habits, just like her father did with his enemies, so that running undisturbed through the streets could become easier, _safer_ , but staying out for long was not safe anyway, less so when the mist that the year before had begun to settle like ashes on the roofs was going to thicken.  
But she knew that it was not fog, what clung to her clothes, what had infected her father’s lungs, forcing him to bed for months, but smoke, a mist compact and solid as metal, a toxic cloud that had sickened many of her neighbours and that, according to her suspects, had weakened her eyesight too.  
But no one had listened to her, not even when, once learned of the disappearance of Sanna, she had shouted at the soldiers that something strange was going on, but they had raised on her a lenient look, like if she was being foolish, before escorting her home, inviting invite her to forget, but Moira had not forgotten, she had not surrendered.  
She had kept on studying the soldiers, their behaviours, analyzing the unusual haze, racking her brains with hard and complicated assumptions for which many would have laughed in her face, but she would not have rested, not until discovering the reason behind Bror’s disease and Sanna’s disappearance.  
Yet, she had to be careful not to let anything leak, not even with her father who, as much as the disease had made him suspicious, did not share her silly claim that someone was behind the mist, doubtful to believe that some creature was threatening them and their lives.  
A certainty, his, given by the blind and absolute assurance that nothing would have happened to them as long as Saruman had watched over the city with his indulgent gaze, yet, she was beginning to have enough of the whole thing, of that life.  
She had had enough of everything.  
Moira did not want to keep on sneaking in the streets with the fear of being kidnapped, she no longer wanted to look away or look down with a strangled breath when a soldier’s gaze lingered on her, silencing her noisy thoughts, she did not want to continue to grope in the shadows, in ignorance.  
Moira was tired of being afraid, tired to feel a cold shiver down her spine whenever, under the door of her house, from under the covers pulled up to her chin, she could see the ruined boots of someone, tired of not being able to see the world around her, tired of pretending to be deaf and blind as her fellow villagers, to speak and not be heard, to not be believed.  
Things had to change, and if no one wanted to do it, if no one wanted to give an explanation to what was happening, to put a stop to the trail of death which had thrown its shadow upon them, then she would have opened their eyes and ears, but to do so Moira had to find conclusive evidence to thrown in front of them to get them to listen to her, to believe her.  
For that purpose she kept on hunting down an invisible enemy every night, hoping to see something, to unravel the tangled of mysteries that had trapped Isengard in its vice.  
She would not have stopped searching, _trying_.  
She would have continued to shout to the world that she would not have been quiet, she would not have lowered her eyes on the ground with the hope that someone would have rescued her from all the pain and the grief, she would not have waited for the coming of a hero who would have taken care of the problems that it was up to her to solve.  
 _She would have done it instead_ Moira promised to herself, standing and slipping silently in the dark street of the valley.  
She swore it to the broken body of the trees before letting herself be swallowed up by the fog, pretending to be the shadow of a city that was slowly falling prey of its unforgivable darkness.

°°°

The heavy breathing of her father helped Moira to keep the count of the strings that were still missing to close the old tunic, sliding the metal mesh over her tiny body while searching in the greyish face of Bror the mark of some kind of improvement, but in vain.  
 _He had lost more weight_ Moira found herself thinking with increasing anger and despair, removing the belt from the ground while her hollow eyes checked his wheezy chest.  
It was as if he was struggling to breathe, and it was the truth, even if the refreshing water had managed to dampen the rough coughing that scratched his chest and throat, but shortly after, the breathlessness had returned to grasp his chest and to obscure her pained face with the shadow of what she knew was now certainty.  
He was dying.  
Her father was dying, and she could do nothing to prevent it.  
Moira could almost touch the slow descent of the icy veil of death that, after having deprived his legs of sensibility, forcing him to bed, was beginning to stretch its frost fingers on his arms, strong and muscular limbs that he used to close around her in protection.  
Arms that now she was forced to tie around her neck to not let him fall limply on the bed while changing his sweaty clothes, muscles that she saw sagging whenever her father tried to stretch out a hand to stroke her cheek wet by tears before dropping it with a frustrated hiss, swallowing his pride.  
Proud, her father had always been proud. The Captain of the Sorcerer’s troops.  
Proud and glorious in his shining armour that now she was trying to slide on her figure, grieving for powerlessness that hurt, killed her from the inside.  
Because, it did not matter how much love she could feel, or how desperately she could wish to see him again strong and magnificent as she remembered him, what was in front of her eyes was always a tired man, eaten by disease, who had just the strength to stretch a small smile for his daughter.  
She bit her lip to hold back the tears that Moira chocked back in anger, sliding the helmet on her head to mingle among the squads patrolling her area.  
Moira took care to settle the heavy purple cloak around her shoulder, so to look a little higher and threatening, authoritarian just like her father used to be while wearing the same armour, but even if she did not give the same feeling of power, that should be enough.  
It _had_ to be enough.  
She gazed into the small mirror on the wall with a dark look, her green eyes even darker and more disturbing thanks to the grim twinkle of the metal band that suffocated her head.  
Moira felt awkward with all that weight on her, and her muscles, although trained by the work on the field would not have allowed her to endure for long the stress that soon would have broken her knees and shattered her bones.  
Huffing, she dragged herself to the foot of the narrow and small bed to caress the sweaty forehead of Bror one last time before leaving shakily her house.  
The fog that day seemed to have sensed her desire to hide herself, because, the more she processed in the thick and clinging air, the more her eyes struggled to see the feet she forced to move thanks to a mental scheme, pushing the heels of her boot to swing on the cold stone of the alley, taking her to the right path.  
At that time, she had had to look like a ghost, with her eyes closed and her arms stretched forward, blindly, so to avoid bumping into something, an eventuality that was repeated a couple of times when her memories stumbled in new things that she did not remember.  
And yet, the more she advanced, the more the surprise to become ever more disoriented after each step led her to frown in a confused grimace until she stumbled in an elevation in the ground that Moira did not remember, just as she had no memory of a wall against which she crushed her head when she stretched her neck in search of the hole in which she had slipped yesterday.   
But it was with a hint of flurry panic that she realized that there was no hole in the wall she kept on touching.  
Moira rubbed her knuckles against the stuff, hitting it a couple of time to figure out the solidity, and it was with a hiss of worry that her hand came into contact with something unusual, suspicious, a damp feeling that warned her of just having dirtied her hands with some kind of paint.  
A disturbing slimy paint, because it was sticky like tar, and it had a biting smell that at first convinced Moira to not pull her fingers near her nose.  
It was imprudent and terribly creepy having to regard the situation in which she was, but it could be only glue, or a mark to identify the start of the new wall, she didn’t know, but she must.  
Against her better judgment, she decided to move her hands to her face, and when she did it, when she inhaled deeply the smell, her eyes grew wide and petrified as she began to rub her hands against her cloak with frantic and agitated moves while her breath struggled and her heart screamed in horror.  
Because it was _blood_ , what smeared the fingers she scratched panicky, scraping the tender skin of the wrist she began to scratch hysterically with her short and broken nails to take it away.  
Blood that was not hers, the blood of someone who had been wounded, or _killed_ whispered something in her head.  
Moira shook her head in a nervous gesture, moving from the side to jump over the small subsidence that would have taken her in the clear water of the Ilsen, but when she found herself staggering back to the brutality of the recoil, Moira put her hand to her forehead in pain to stop the headache while her pupils dilated in disbelief.  
Her hands began to sweat when she tried again to slip in the hole, but the more she searched the way in her memories, unsuccessfully, the more the feeling of panic assaulted her mind once found that a hard surface blocked the way, a pinfold that until yesterday was not there, a gateway that someone had had the ability to wall up in one night.  
Someone who kidnapped women in late night, when the mist became too thick.  
Someone who no one could see, or _pretended to not see_ hissed the grim voice of her consciousness, numb with the fear that was chewing her insides.  
Moira kept on hitting the wall with her face distorted by despair, her throat full of a gurgle of curses she hissed between clenched teeth once understood that no matter how long she tried, how stupidly stubborn she proved herself to be, she would not have found anything but a solid wall to close her escape, while a new and terrible awareness froze her on the spot.  
Trapped.  
 _They were trapped in their own city._  
The gelid metal of the visor quavered under the hysterical cry that she had let slip from her lips, chapped from the cold, a low rattle that Moira returned to hiss once collected the glimmer of lucidity necessary to think what to do next.  
She spun around, creaking the heels of the boots with a hollow crackle that startled her, her eyes that probed the darkness nervously while the thoughts, raging, overlapped one on the other.  
She had to return home, Moira reasoned critically, taking the first step, she had to prepare a bag, and find a horse on which hoisting her father to facilitate the escape, and then, and then what? What could she do?  
Flee, and leave Sanna behind?  
Dragging herself to the high walls and leave even her father once they had been seen in the mist?  
Would she have to leave them behind to save herself?  
No.  
 _No_ , _she would not have left them_ Moira growled to herself with anger, eyes narrowed in a cruel mask that sharpened her face and voice.  
She would not have left any of them behind.  
She would have found a way to bring them to safety, she would have done everything in her power to take them away from there, and if fate would have demanded her life in return, then, she would have given a good reason to death to curse her for the centuries to come.  
Moira walked a few steps away from the wall, ready to throw her tired limbs in a run that would have snatched her breath and burned her lungs, she had just flexed her legs to gauge the weight of the armour, so to be not guided by that to the ground like a rag doll, when the unexpected and sudden heavy breathing behind her snapped her head toward the sound with a twist so painful to cause a chilling _‘crack_ from her bones.  
Her ears became completely deaf to her gasp of pain when the whistle of the wind weighted itself with the growl of the dark ad shadowy shape, too high to be that of an ordinary soldier, _to be the one of a common human being_ cried something inside her.  
Moira stumbled over the cloak when she unconsciously stepped back, and when she collided with the wood of the wall she knew that that thing, whatever it was, had noticed her movement and that now he was watching her.  
She could almost feel his eyes lingering on the crack that allowed the chilly air to blow in her eyes the horror that, soon, crystallized her features in a mask of fear before the panic shoved her to run with one hand resting on the wall to have something to follow, against which stand.  
 _That thing_ , she found herself thinking with agony, had the heavy and loud pace of a drunkard who was dragging his heavy limbs for the burning desire to reach a new mug of alcohol, and she was conscious that what the outstretched hand wanted, the hand that tore her a horrified scream when he tried to reach her, driving it away with the lining of the sword when it sought her, was her.  
And she ran.  
She ran as if she had an army of orcs behind her back.   
She ran with the same agonizing despair of those who knew that something bigger than them would have soon cut down their trembling legs, so to make them fall on their knees, that, no matter how long she tried to rebel against something she could not see, in the end, the mist would have swallowed her and her memories.  
 _Her screams._  
It would have killed her _too_.  
Yet, Moira did not want to die, she did not want to leave her father and Sanna to themselves.  
She, she could still fight. She had been the only one to do it until now.  
The only one to protect what had to be protected.  
The only one able to rip her loved ones from the horror that would have soon eaten her too.  
The only one to still have the strength to do something about it.  
And Moira would have shown that even a small thing like her, that even a stubborn and wily peasant in the prime of her eighteen years would have had the same importance of a king, that she could have done something great, big.  
Something to change what she saw.  
And something changed, suddenly, beneath her.  
A step that Moira took on the void while the darkness swallowed her as her body crumpled on herself in the fall that would have taken her breath away, and it did.  
The fall stole it away when she rolled on a mountain of rabble on which her body sagged, with aching bones and the helmet that slipped away from her head with a spine-chilling tinkle.  
Judging by the polluting stink of the discharges, she had to be in the sewers, but the pressure on her chest prevented her to think about anything else except the throbbing pain that would have made her scream and cry, if her mouth was not pressed against something soft, a fabric that tickled her trembling eyelids before touching her lips, forcing Moira to unfold her eyes with a sense of nausea.  
The sudden and grotesque roar above her convinced Moira to keep her eyes fixed in the vitreous gaze of the corpse whose filthy hair caressed her cheek paled in horror, her limbs frozen for fear of attracting the attention of the huge shadow who was looking at her in the darkness.  
She even stopped to breath, blinking slowly to chase away the tears that filled her throat while the growl came back to shake the walls and the dead body that, rolling, covered her, burying Moira in a sea of horror that she wanted to push away from her, but she could not, not now. Not yet.  
Instead, she continued to remain motionless, frozen arms to her sides and her wide and petrified eyes that over the shoulder of the corpse followed the grim profile of a horrible and frightening creature who was not human, _it could not be_.  
She begged her heart to be quiet when, in the dark, she glimpsed the restless glimmer of those eyes, ocular cavity from which she wanted to look away, but doing so would have made her visible, and she had to pretend to be dead to make desist her pursuer from seeking her out.  
So, in silence, she waited for that thing to get tired, and when he did, when the monster decided to resume the walk in the narrow and damp tunnel, Moira let the tears slip down her cheeks while her lips, finally free to move, parted beneath the trembling breath of the cry in which she sank in silence.  
She kept, without making any noise, to empty herself from all that was compressing her chest.  
Heartache, despair, horror, and finally, _fear_.  
Fear that she had finally found what she had sought for so long.  
Fear to know that what she would have to face, would have been too horrible to tell. To accept.  
Fear.  
Simple and chilling fear that numbed her feeling, her heart, atrophying her muscles and the brain that, suddenly, blacked out.  
It did so the eyes she hid behind her sore eyelids.  
It did so the voice that she swallowed with a trembling breath, but her mind did not do the same, the only part of her still not able to collapse, to hold on something, and she clung hard on them, on the orders her father used to yell to his soldiers before a battle, to keep their nerve.  
And even if she was not a soldier, even if she was too young, _too much everything_ , to be able to take charge of all that rot, Moira found herself counting in silence, buried by the body of a dead man, listening to the thundering voice of Bror that incited the army to fight, to the die for their motherland, for what they wanted to protect.  
And she, she still wanted it, to protect her beloved ones.   
She still had it, something to protect.   
She imagined herself like a soldier, she invested her body in that heavy armour to distract the mind and enjoy a moment of peace, recalling that she had been left alone, in her rank.  
She was the only soldier to be still standing, the last hope for those who could not fight, the only one to face the shadow fallen from the sky.  
And she kept on counting, gathering from the deep of her broken body and mind the strength to fight against something that no one saw, no one heard, something that, on her heart, had already closed its grip of smoke and mist.


End file.
